Supriya Sekhar

The UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) to reassure the public is coming up with technological advancements.

On November 23, Suprema, Inc., a global leader in biometrics and ID solutions, announced company’s latest ‘RealScan-10 UID’ fingerprint live scanner tested in full compliance and received certification from the Government of India’s STQC (Standardization Testing & Quality Certification) for the country’s UID (Unique ID) project. Suprema’s RealScan-10 UID is a compact-sized portable fingerprint live scanner which provides range-leading capture speed and clear image quality by using the company’s advanced optical image processing technology. The device performs world’s fastest image scan rate of over 20 frames per second using powerful internal DSP and image processing technique.

4G Identity Solutions, Suprema’s partner in India has supported Suprema’s STQC certification process and in development of VDMs. “We are committed to provide the best of breed biometric products and technologies that are best suited for Indian market and Realscan-10 ranks right at the top in capturing the best quality fingerprints” said Dr.Sreeni Tripuraneni, CEO of 4G Identity Solutions. Earlier in 2010, the company won a number of public projects in USA, China and Brazil.

The technology might be fast and effective but the question that lingers is that: can this technology record a staggering 600 million Indians, scan 1.2 billion irises, collect 6 billion fingerprints and record 600 million addresses? Frankly speaking no system in the world has handled anything on this scale! If you think about it this is the result we get: When the 600 millionth person is assigned a unique 12-digit UID, the system that generates it will have to compare it against 599,999,999 photographs, 1,199,999,998 irises and 12,999,999,990 fingerprints to ensure the number is indeed unique. By the time the entire Indian population is covered, the complexity, well, doubles. This project is like the proverb, ‘building castles in the air’. This project holds no good because the problem which lies in the foundation-level is unattended.

There is a problem of the project being left mid-way! If the current government loses at the next polls, there is a chance that the next one may think the idea a waste of time and money and simply disband the project, and the team may lose five years of hard effort. As the project focuses on giving identification number so as to avail the benefits of government program and to establish equality. But the larger picture shows a Nazi-induced holocaust-like pogrom against the minorities in India. Once again the poor falls under the category of distinction, so the focus of the project is far from achievement. Moreover, the technocrat Nandan Nilekani says that the project is not mandatory. If it is not mandatory then how will half the population (who comprise the poor section of the society) avail the benefits of the UID process!

Gopal Krishna, member, Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL), says in a November 23-dated letter to Oscar Fernandes, chairperson, and members of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resources: “The UID scheme is an opposite of Right to Information. The latter makes the government transparent before their masters, the citizens. The former makes the citizens transparent before their servant, the government. It is a fascist plan.”

The icing on the cake is that the SEBI (Securities Exchange Board of India) has come out with a proposition which talks about the inclusion of the poor turning as retail participant in the markets. This proposition is beyond imagination, instead of questioning the feasibility of the project, the market is ready to reap profits.

Besides this capitalist approach Nilekani has a consumerist approach to the whole project. Speaking to business leaders gathered at The Nielsen Company’s Consumer 360 event in New Delhi on November 24, the UIDAI chief said over a third of India’s 1.1 billion consumers had been largely overlooked in areas such as banking and social services. He also detailed four trends        taking   place across India:

1. A demographic disruption taking place in India with an expected 11 million new people  joining  the workforce every year for the next five years;

2. Mass migration to cities. The urban population is expected to grow by 31 people every minute for many years to come;

3. Low-cost mobile phones mean all social sets have access to the same or similar content;

4. Indians are increasingly impatient with failing systems. As a consequence, service providers are responding more rapidly than ever.

Maintaining that the new consumer, empowered with an ‘Aadhar’ number, will change the way she reaches out to products and services, Piyush Mathur, president, India region, The Nielsen Company, said, “We will need to adapt how we market to these consumers and win in the marketplace. In addition to price, place, promotion and product, it will bring the fifth P – Precision – to life.”

According to an activist, Aadhaar is a blind endorsement of Professor Coimbatore Krishnarao (CK) Prahalad’s ‘Theory of Marketing to the Bottom of the Pyramid’, which in India’s case is 60 crore people living below the poverty line; would-be consumers who corporations wish to target in order to improve their bottom line. “It’s an idea in conflict, because the target population for this mega-marketing adventure is consumers who cannot afford three square meals a day, let alone avail of goods and services aimed at them by corporations,” the activist said.

In my opinion the UID project instead of adding benefits will add more complexities and problems. If it goes in this business-model path then it is not far for UID turning into a scam.